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your church represents a deceitful anti-Christian cult.
That is not at all a violation of any rules. That is exactly what many Bible-believing Christians have said about the SDA. YO have only to look online to find countless examples of that. Remember, I did not say that or necessarily claim it was true; I simply said that it is a common criticism thrown against the SDA. Not all Christians are convinced that the SDA is a basically Christian approach. Question is: Why is that? How do you address the issue?
... what is good about your denomination. Is there any good in it or you can't do anything else but post verses.
That doesn't tell anyone what is good about your denomination. Is there any good in it or you can't do anything else but post verses.
Why should someone look at your denomination over say Baptist, what good things are there about your denomination? Do you know?
Bob, one of my points is that you need to address matters in your own house first. Here and elsewhere,
you keep saying that TE is a "false religion," etc. But ,truth is, many are convinced SDA is a false religion
or at least not compatible with Christianity. You should focus more on that,
Omnipresence, as you noted, means being present everywhere
I understand that persons other than yourself might have trouble with panentheism, and that is because they, too, have difficulty understanding how God can be omnipresent. However, I am not immediately concerned with them. I am talking to you, not them.
And the fact of the matter is, you reject omnipresence on the grounds that Mrs. White said that was not the case.
Regarding the Trinity, it is a well-established fact that Mrs. White and her husband were initially Arians, Later, true, they did come to accept the Trinity. However, I appears to be something more or less forced on them
The issue here isn't whether or not atheists agree tithe Flood, etc. The issue here is understanding that the while the Bible may be divinely inspirited, it is also very much the product of an ancients prescientific culture and therefore may no be fully trustworthy on natters of creation, etc.
However, the Bible need not be inerrant
As I pointed out in detail, the Virgin Birth is not just a problem scientifically. It is also a problem theologically. If you disagree, then you should go through the points I presented and address each one of them, showing how you would cope with them.
Regarding the Resurrection, this is a completely different matter from the Virgin Birth.
While it may seem scientifically impossible to have children without intercourse, science really ahs no idea what happens when we die.
we, too, all live on in God. The Resurrection is a powerful raising into consciousness of this fact.
If all you focused in on were the miracles of Christ, you would not be able to differentiate him from any other wisdom teacher.
About the virgin birth, why would all four gospels have to say it for it to be true? All that shows is that Jesus' death and resurrection are more important than his birth. The meaning of the word almah (and you're thinking of the Isaiah prophecy here, not the NT) is irrelevant. When Mary asked, "How can this be, since I don't know a man?" its pretty clear she's saying she's a virgin at the time she conceived.Bob, I don't think you quite grasped the points I was making. First, you do tend to invalidate as unchristian anyone or church who does not agree with the SDA. You did that many times before I spoke to you about this. One issue here is that you should not have been doing this in a serious theological discussion. The other is that it is a very controversial issue whether or not the SDA does represent Christianity or not. That issue continually surfaces among born-again evangelicals and other conservative Christian groups. Hence, the web contains many repudiations of the SDA by such conservative Christian groups. I mention this to you, because you shod stick to specific points on which disagree, rather than simply writing them off as unchristian. Remember, you are not a major spokesperson for teh Christian religion or for the SDA.
Secondly, I am not sure we are on the same wavelength as to what omnipresence means. In the example you gave about the desk, this simply demonstrated you are omnipresent in a very inferior way. Only God is omnipresent in the fullest sense of the word; and that means, using your example, God is both present in the office and also in your desk.
Thirdly, if you are interested in addressing certain theological objections to the Virgin Birth, then you have to explain why it is only found in two gospels, why you feel virgin is the correct translation, and how you feel this allows Jesus to be of teh line of David.
Fourthly, you need to show why you believe that what holds for the Virgin Birth should also hold with the Resurrection. As I said, we have no solid science to tell us what happens when we die. That kind of question is totally beyond silence, although the literature on NDE is helpful here. Much depends here on the metaphysical system you are working from. I am working from the premise that God is the chief exemplification of all metaphysical principles. Loosely, put, that means what creatures have, God has, but to the nth degree. In turn that means while we can understand the past as living on in our memories, God can do this in a far more complete way then we can, in a way such that absolutely nothing is lost, so that we, in every detail of ourselves, live on. Hence, the revelatory power of teh Resurrection event.
Fifthly, you are completely overlook the claims made for other wisdom teachers. As I said, Pythagoras was also credited with raising the dead. In the OT, the priests were honored as also having magical powers, which is why Moses had to fight hard against them. Indeed, accounts from all the ancient religions speak of wonder-workeers. And, as far as raising the dead goes, modern medicine can be well-credited with doing the same thing, hence, the NDE accounts.
Sixthly, the TE model dos not say that everything has to go as teh way it dos in the lab. There is more than one TE view, a point which you seem to ignore. Certainly, in mine, it is not the case that everything has to go as what we can observe in the lab or as what science may say.
Sixthly, I have no idea where you got the idea that the author of Gen. 1 was trying somehow to protect Darwinism. Furthermore, there is more than one version of evolution. Darwin, then, is not the only game in town. And even if it were, it would not necessarily eliminate God. t to be ordained when he went on the Beagle and he does speak of god in his works. In fact, in the second edition (I think), he speaks of God as necessary to start the evolutionary process, bring about life.
Bob, I don't think you quite grasped the points I was making. First, you do tend to invalidate as unchristian anyone or church who does not agree with the SDA.
The other is that it is a very controversial issue whether or not the SDA does represent Christianity or not.
I mention this to you, because you shod stick to specific points on which disagree, rather than simply writing them off as unchristian. Remember, you are not a major spokesperson for teh Christian religion or for the SDA.
Secondly, I am not sure we are on the same wavelength as to what omnipresence means.
In the example you gave about the desk, this simply demonstrated you are omnipresent in a very inferior way.
Only God is omnipresent in the fullest sense of the word; and that means, using your example, God is both present in the office and also in your desk.
Thirdly, if you are interested in addressing certain theological objections to the Virgin Birth, then you have to explain why it is only found in two gospels
Fourthly, you need to show why you believe that what holds for the Virgin Birth should also hold with the Resurrection. As I said, we have no solid science to tell us what happens when we die.
That kind of question is totally beyond silence, although the literature on NDE is helpful here. Much depends here on the metaphysical system you are working from.
I am working from the premise that God is the chief exemplification of all metaphysical principles.
Loosely, put, that means what creatures have, God has, but to the nth degree. In turn that means while we can understand the past as living on in our memories, God can do this in a far more complete way then we can, in a way such that absolutely nothing is lost, so that we, in every detail of ourselves, live on. Hence, the revelatory power of teh Resurrection event.
Sixthly, the TE model dos not say that everything has to go as teh way it dos in the lab. There is more than one TE view, a point which you seem to ignore. Certainly, in mine, it is not the case that everything has to go as what we can observe in the lab or as what science may say.
Sixthly, I have no idea where you got the idea that the author of Gen. 1 was trying somehow to protect Darwinism.
Furthermore, there is more than one version of evolution. Darwin, then, is not the only game in town.
And even if it were, it would not necessarily eliminate God. t to be ordained when he went on the Beagle and he does speak of god in his works. In fact, in the second edition (I think), he speaks of God as necessary to start the evolutionary process, bring about life.
I find this hard to understand and accept. Because I dont think there was just one transition from ape to human that can be classified enough to be classed as human to have a soul. As far as I understand it isn't a single mutation that is going to push that being across the line. That mutation may be a step in one aspect of a change that needed many mutations to happen. When you learn to speak you dont just do it over night. You verbalize little bits of language which gradually becomes speech.One common TE position (and the one I hold, along with literally millions of others, including whole churches) is that there WAS a literal, first person, Adam. He was a member of a community, and was the first person in the ape to human gradual change. After all, there had to be a first, if there weren't humans 5 million years ago, and there are humans today – he was the first to whom God divinely gave a soul. Understanding how populations interbreed makes it obvious that all humans today are descended from him. Original sin did enter the human race though him, because he was the first to be divinely given a soul by God, and perhaps to be developed to the point of being able to conceptualize God, and hence to be able to rebel against God at that time. The idea of Adam as a real, single, historical person, who brought about original sin, and who is the literal ancestor of all humans alive today, is fully compatible with modern science, and an important part, for some, of theistic evolution.
"human beings" can be defined a number of ways, especially with the gradual change of a whole population from ape to a human like today.
Remember that there is variation, and that mutations are in individuals before they spread to the rest of the tribe. So as the whole community gradually evolves from ape to human, whatever arbitrary characteristic is used to define "being human", one individual will be the first to cross that line – and at that time God could divinely create a soul. Of course, all humans will be descended from him, just as they are all descended from others as well. Think of that mayflower club, which only allows members who are descended from the few people who came over from Europe on the mayflower. That club today has thousands of members, and in a few thousand years or so, literally everyone on earth will be descended from those on the mayflower. The same holds true for an individual, so long as they have a few kids. Thus, if you have a few kids, it is very likely that in a few thousand years, literally everyone on earth will be descended from you as well. It's all a mix. So, coupling that with the thing above about the literal Adam, it all works well.
It could be that God instilled in humans a spiritual awakening for which they never had before. In this sense though there may have been many who had this awareness it only took one to take that step to defy God. Just as the awakening of God in humans was introduced into human thought, the thought of sin was also introduced.While I hold to the literal conception described above, a figurative one works fine too. Specifically, if the story of the fall is an allegorical story about how humans have a real, evolved tendency to sin, acquired from Satan - who is a figurative representation of those forces that gave us the tendency to sin, then the verse in Romans is simply a figurative reference to that. I know many TE's who hold such a position, and it's a solid position to hold.
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